


Cut and Run

by Steerpike13713



Series: Exiles Together [1]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Decisions, Bigotry & Prejudice, Drunkenness, Gen, Genetic Engineering, Minor Violence, On the Run
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 12:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10831263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steerpike13713/pseuds/Steerpike13713
Summary: When Amsha Bashir’s face filled the screen, he almost erased the message then and there, expecting yet another frustrating attempt to convince him to come back, visit, speak to his father again, as if they hadn’t said everything they needed to before he left for the Academy. Then, he heard the shouting in the background, saw his mother’s image glance over her shoulder, eyes wide, before turning back to him.“Jules!” she gasped out, her eyes flickering wildly, “I – there’s no time. They found out. Starfleet – I think it’s Starfleet. They’re right downstairs, your father-” there was another muffled shout, something like ‘through here’, and Amsha shook her head. “Jules, if you’re watching- if they haven’t already come – they know about you. Get out – get out now!”





	Cut and Run

Palis was swaying on her feet by the time they got back to his flat, and Julian had to concentrate to mimic her. ‘Faintly buzzed’ on Julian was ‘three sheets to the wind’ for the rest of humanity, however, and Palis collapsed, giggling, against him as soon as the door fell closed behind them, the scent of far too much vodka and toffee clear on her breath as her lips caught the corner of Julian’s mouth, then his chin, her coordination for once not up to the task.

“Come on, Julian,” she said, not quite slurred, “Valedictorian – it’s something to celebrate, isn’t it?”

Julian smiled dizzily back at her, his hands coming up to steady her against him as she stumbled again, as far from graceful as he had ever seen her and somehow all the more beautiful for it. “Weren’t we doing that already?”

She rolled her eyes at him, and grabbed his hands, trying to pull him forward. “Dance with me?”

“Now?” He almost laughed at how affronted she looked at that. “Don’t you have rehearsals tomorrow? I know I do.”

He had his interview. The one where his whole future would be decided, or at least his first posting. His mind was crowding with ideas – the safest place would be some go-nowhere assignment in a far-flung corner of the Federation. Or, if he couldn’t resist something higher-profile, at least the lowest position available from there. No sense in pushing his luck now. He could try for something better in a few years, when it was a bit more believable and he wasn’t the Academy wunderkind who had graduated the medical track at twenty-three.

“Spoilsport – one dance, and then you can put me to bed,” Palis promised, flashing a bright, mischievous smile and lifting his arm for a twirl that nearly toppled them both over as she tripped over her own feet. He was the only one who got to see her like this, uncoordinated and laughing and without any of her usual poise. It was probably selfish to love it so much, with how embarrassed Palis would be in the morning, but there was something incredibly charming about seeing all that grace and elegance and self-control completely undone, about being _trusted_ with the sight, that made him tingle all through with warmth. He had to almost pour her into bed in the end, batting away her few clumsy attempts to tug his shirt up and over his head, and went through to the other room before she could make another move. Palis probably wouldn’t even remember this encounter tomorrow – he should probably replicate a few headache pills and water for her for the morning because he couldn’t imagine anyone being able to dance ballet with the sort of hangover she had to look forward to.

If the replicator hadn’t been right next to his computer, Julian would never have noticed the message and the rest of his life would have turned out very differently. As it was, he heard the chime just as he had finished typing in his brand-new medical override, and clicked open the message without looking at who it was from.

When Amsha Bashir’s face filled the screen, he almost erased the message then and there, expecting yet another frustrating attempt to convince him to come back, visit, speak to his father again, as if they hadn’t said everything they needed to before he left for the Academy. Then, he heard the shouting in the background, saw his mother’s image glance over her shoulder, eyes wide, before turning back to him.

“Jules!” she gasped out, her eyes flickering wildly, “I – there’s no time. They found out. Starfleet – I think it’s Starfleet. They’re right downstairs, your father-” there was another muffled shout, something like ‘through here’, and Amsha shook her head. “Jules, if you’re watching- if they haven’t already come – they know about you. Get out – get out now!”

Behind her, the door burst open, and Julian saw a sudden flash of men in dark uniforms – police? Amsha let out a sort of desperate, wild little shriek, and the screen went black.

For a moment, Julian couldn’t process it. He had always known that the day would come when Starfleet kicked down the door and dragged him off to face justice for what his parents had done. He had never expected it would be so soon. For a moment, he stood there, dumbstruck, before the replicator hummed to tell him his override code had been rejected, and panic began to set in.

How long did he have? Not long, he was certain – hours, minutes, maybe they were already just down the hall, waiting for the signal. He pricked his ears, but there were only the usual night sounds of San Francisco outside, the footfalls of the neighbours, the rush of vehicles, the constant low hum of a city that was not quite asleep. What could he do? Stay, here, and what then? There hadn’t been a case like this in almost a century – what punishment would it be? Imprisonment? Or…one of those attempts to reverse his augmentation that he’d happened on in his reading now and then, when he’d been reading about the old cases from just after the end of the Eugenics Wars, with the all-too-high chance that something would go wrong and he would be forced to live like that, eking out whatever animal or vegetative existence such an attempt might leave him with. Or, he had wondered during particularly hopeless moments of cynicism in his teens, possibly being quietly taken off-planet and shot, and his death passed off as an accident. Even then, he’d known that wasn’t something the Federation would ever do, but he’d thought the thought all the same. If he swore he’d hold back, never use his abilities consciously again, if he threw himself on Starfleet’s mercy- He’d always thought he’d go quietly, when the time came, not make things any worse for himself, but he’d hardly had any time at all, yet. He’d expected to be older, somehow, with a career he could use to say _look, didn’t I do my best? I’m no Khan Singh, I never could be – I don’t deserve to face his fate._ He could stay, and die in prison or on an operating table. Or he could run. Run _where_? And when would he ever be able to _stop_ running?

Quickly, mechanically, without thinking about what he was doing, he stood, and crossed the room to where his old fake ID card was still tucked into a desk drawer. Felix had only intended the thing for bar-hopping, and Julian, for all his artificial perfections, wasn’t nearly the savant Felix was with technology, but it would do. Palis was lying passed out in the bed when Julian slipped in, her long hair spread out across the pillows. He did not pause to look at her – he couldn’t, if he wanted to leave before Starfleet came for him – as he threw clothes into a battered overnight bag without looking at them in the dark. His fingers found something soft in the depths of the wardrobe. Kukalaka. He hadn’t wanted to admit to Palis he still had the old bear, not yet anyway, had hidden him in the wardrobe every time she came over. He waited barely a second before placing the bear gently in his bag, and straightening up, carefully not thinking about what he was about to do.

The San Francisco civilian spaceport wasn’t far from the larger, more impressive Starfleet one, and nothing all that impressive. Just a handful of shuttles, going to the near solar system for day-jaunts, barely requiring anything more than a basic ID card to get off-planet.

“One ticket for Pluto Station, please,” he said into the ticket replicator, which obediently produced the required chip. The woman standing behind Julian turned a bright, exhausted smile on him.

“Going to the penguin sanctuary, are you?”

Julian nodded. “Yes,” he said, and then, because people were so much safer when they were talking about themselves. “You?”

“What – oh! Visiting my daughter on the Io colony. She’s pregnant, and I did so want to be there for the first scans. I worried at first, because these hybrid pregnancies, you know, but T’Por is apparently very attentive to her, and they really do seem committed to making this work.” The woman laughed. “Oh- but you won’t want to listen to me babbling on, I’m sure,” she said, in a tone designed to invite denial, before looking over her glasses at Julian, “Ah…Pluto, you said? Are you sure you’ll be warm enough there, dear?”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” Julian managed, wishing she could go away and stop calling him ‘dear’. He could hardly snap at her without drawing attention, though, and besides, snapping at entirely blameless, over-concerned older women was really not something he much liked the thought of doing. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to require more than a vague ‘hmmm’ or ‘really’ in response to what was fast becoming a monologue about her daughter Mercedes and all the things she hoped they’d do together on Io colony. Besides, she was social cover. It sounded very ruthless, and very like something out of Julian’s spy holos, if he put it that way, but he couldn’t think of another way to phrase it. A young man in company with a motherly older woman who kept calling him ‘dear’ invited its own set of assumptions, and the authorities would be looking for a man alone.

He was rapidly becoming aware of the fact that he was trying to disappear while wearing screamingly orange trousers and a shirt so blindingly purple that Palis had actually winced when she saw what he’d decided to wear to the post-graduation party they’d been attending that night – a last hurrah before they were all split off to serve on different ships and stations all across the Quadrant. He tried, very carefully, to ignore the fact that he would certainly never see anyone at that party again, because if he thought about it, he would go mad. He was developing a headache already – one problem of metabolising alcohol so much faster, the hangover came on just as fast, and was usually worse for it. He wanted nothing more than to lie in the quiet dark of a sleeper shuttle, and not think about anything but the pain in his head for a few hours. He couldn’t, of course. If nothing else, it would rather negate the effect of standing here listening to a complete stranger chatter on about her hopes for her first grandchild if he left now and made it clear there was no real connection between them.

He wondered, absurdly, what Palis would think when she woke up alone. Or were Starfleet already closing in on him? Had they already broken down the door of his flat, and if so, how long would it be before they thought of the spaceport? It took a constant effort not to look over his shoulder, to keep his face blankly pleasant and attentive. Earth to Pluto was a sixteen-hour trip, even at warp speed, but Julian had no intention of going that far. The largest space station in this solar system was far closer to home – orbiting Saturn, as it happened, a natural midway point where hundreds of ships docked every day and no-one would notice one more person in the crowds. That wouldn’t hold for long, and he wasn’t fool enough to think the manhunt would stay on Earth for long. Sooner or later, someone would look off-world, and he would need to be far away before that happened.

The shuttle, when it arrived, was new and clean and shiny, and did not match up at all with Julian’s mental image of suitable conditions for a desperate man on the run from justice. Every dramatic sensibility he had was personally offended by the clean, comfortable interior, even as every practical instinct he had reminded him that this way would at least be reasonably comfortable and unlikely to feature starvation, fleas or unpleasant spacefaring diseases.

“Well, dear,” Julian’s companion said with a smile once they were aboard, “I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready to turn in, so I’ll just say goodnight.”

Julian forced a smile. “Night, then. I might do the same.”

She smiled at him, and he was half-afraid for a moment she’d try to pat his cheek, or something equally mortifying. “You really _are_ a nice young man,” she said. “Well, I’ll be off at Io, but I do hope your visit to the penguin sanctuary goes well.”

“Thank you, I’m sure it will,” Julian lied, and took himself off to the sleeping cabin, where he took the first empty bunk he could find, burying his face in the pillow out of some absurd horror that his face would be all over the system by morning. It _was_ absurd. One gawky, socially inept medical student, even an augment, or one newly-minted doctor, could hardly be expected to pose the same sort of threat as a Khan Singh. He might never- never be able to go home again, but he wouldn’t find himself hounded all over the galaxy.

He would never go home again. He repeated it to himself, trying to convince himself. It didn’t work, somehow. Some deep part of him was convinced that he’d wake up in bed with Palis warm at his side, still with no greater concerns than where his first posting would be, and whether he’d make a good impression once he was there. He was proven wrong seven and a half hours later, when he woke again in the artificial brightness of ship’s morning to the alarm beeping beside his head to warn him that they were coming up on Saturn One. The strange, dreamlike purpose that had seen him safely away from Earth seemed to have melted away come morning, and now, clear-headed and with cold dread starting to set in, whole thing seemed far less of an adventure than it had done the previous night. He attracted more odd looks than he would have liked in the queue for the refresher, and for one wild moment was terrified the news was already there, and he had only minutes before Starfleet was called and his options would run out entirely. Then, sense reasserted itself. No-one would jostle a known or even a suspected augment in a queue, and he somehow doubted anyone would snicker behind their hands as one walked past them. Mockery was something to be kept for when you were good and far away, with your friends over a few drinks, not when the monster your parents had warned you about was standing, real as corn, in front of you. He shook himself. He was being melodramatic. There would be punishment, for smuggling his way into Starfleet, but the original crime had not been his. All he’d done was lie on his forms. They didn’t start quadrant-wide manhunts over a little thing like that.

Looking at his face in the mirror in the ‘fresher, he was grey-faced, unkempt, unshaven, slumped. As unlike the Julian Bashir who had walked home laughing in the warm night with Palis just hours before as could be imagined. She would know, by now, that he had run. What must she think of him? Did she know why? Had Starfleet made his disgrace public yet? It would be embarrassment enough they hadn’t caught him that they might keep it quiet for a little while longer, long enough for him to get a ship to- to _where_? The Klingon Empire had a newly-minted extradition treaty with the Federation they would not want to test this early. Romulus…no. Just no. Bad enough to be constantly calculating his own actions without a whole world doing the same thing, and he had no faith in the Romulans not to vivisect him the moment they found out about his augmentations, to see if they could recreate them for their own people. He raked both hands through his hair, feeling the prickling of tears at the corners of his eyes. Where could he go? What could he do? What would he _be_ , now everything he had hoped for was lost? He could have cried. Only a lifetime of _don’t show it, remember where you are, remember how little you can get away with_ kept his breathing slow and level, and if his eyes were still slightly wet when he straightened up to examine himself critically in the mirror, it wasn’t too noticeable. He combed his fingers through his hair a few more times, trying to work it out of its usual order to fall across more of his face, and didn’t even consider shaving off the five o’clock shadow that was already starting to darken his jawline. In spy holos, disguise always seemed a lot more _possible_ , somehow. Then again, in spy holos, you usually had some inventive and absurd new gadget and a new identity already set up. Spy holos, Julian felt, had a great deal to answer for.

All right, then. He checked his false ID card again – James Unwin, the name on it said. The picture was his own nineteen-year-old face, just on the cusp of timing out. How long would it be good for? If they asked Felix- He didn’t like to think Felix would talk, but if they told him- His mouth twisted. Better safe than dissected. Checking the replicator queue, he found no-one had erased it all journey – he rather wished they had done, considering some of the items listed, but all to the good. Still – there was a basic follicle regenerator, a few down, the sort that didn’t do anything for hair loss but would do well enough for Julian’s purposes. He replicated it quickly in the tiny ‘fresher replicator, the one that was only really meant for forgotten toothpaste or misplaced razors, and tucked it into his pocket, then put his head between his knees and breathed in, deep and regular, until his head felt clear again.

He attracted no fewer odd looks in the line to disembark at Saturn One – he needed a change of clothes, and quickly. Maintenance uniform would be best, he thought – who ever noticed a janitor? The mechanised ticket barriers took his ticket chit and faked ID card without protest, and then he was let out into a throng of people, so tight he could barely squeeze his way through, keeping his head down against surveillance. If he had to stay somewhere, somewhere shady would be preferable. Somewhere no-one was going to ask that many questions, better yet. The trouble was, places like that tended to charge for rooms, where taking proper guest quarters wouldn’t cost him credits he didn’t have. And trying to convert Julian Bashir’s credits to latinum here would be the next-best thing to a beacon screaming out ‘I’m here’ to anyone with an interest. He didn’t know how long he had before the search went off-planet. Earth was a big place, after all, and only a handful of people had known about the fake ID, which would have been a lot more reassuring if they weren’t the handful of people most likely to be asked about where he might have gone. He needed to see the news, as soon as possible, but to do that he needed to be able to go out in public without attracting attention.

There was a station map not far from the docking bay – Saturn One was large enough and attracted enough tourists on their way to more exciting places that there would have to be – but it didn’t exactly have parts marked off as ‘shady part of town, avoid at all costs’, which was what Julian was looking for. He squinted at the map, the pounding in his head making it slightly harder to read. Temporary quarters on the habitat section were marked, and there were tourist holodecks and restaurants marked out here and there on the central ring, as well as the Starfleet command centre further along. The areas on the far side of the docking bay, where cargo shipments came in, though, were almost entirely devoid of landmarks. That could mean they were empty, but Julian doubted it somehow. He almost turned that way at once, but then an idea struck him. If the search spread this far, he would be expected to go to the habitat ring first. And he wasn’t exactly inconspicuous as he was – even in this crowd, he was getting the occasional double-take, and that would never do. Mind made up, he turned towards the exit to the habitat ring.

“Temporary quarters?” the clerk at the housing desk asked as Julian stumbled in, his eyes flicking over unkempt hair, grey face, wrinkled clothing. “How long’re you staying?”

“At least a week,” Julian lied. “Single room.”

“Got any ID?”

“Here.”

The man squinted at the card, then looked up at Julian. “Almost timed out, this is.”

“I know,” Julian said quickly, “The replacement hasn’t come in yet.”

The clerk nodded. “Ok, here you go – room 804, second corridor you come to.”

Julian nodded, then paused, deciding how far to take this. “Any idea where I should go to change credits for latinum? I’m supposed to be shipping out for-” Where did they still officially use latinum? “For Argo at the end of the week with a couple of friends, figured I might need a bit of spending credit.”

The man scratched his ear. “Uh…latinum?” he asked, “Try Yaigg’s place – should be able to get you however much in credits.”

Julian nodded again, grinned, then realised he was behaving too much like himself and left without another word.  804, when he reached it, was a bare little room with a replicator, a ‘fresher and a bed, but that was all Julian needed. He stripped off his clothes almost immediately, and put them in for recycling with a slight pang at the loss – he’d liked that outfit. The shirt had been the first thing he’d ever bought with his own credits, five years ago now, and had any number of happy memories associated with it.

He checked through his bag, but there was nothing better there – he wished, for the first time, that his dress sense didn’t skew so far towards the colourful, or that he had at least listened to some of Palis’s suggestions about introducing more muted designs to his wardrobe. Well, no help for that. Into the recycling with it all, delete the record, and then delete the deletion. The bag, at least, did not need replacing – it was a plain grey duffle, the sort you’d find a hundred of in any given crowd. He replicated clothes – shirts, jackets, trousers, a heavy pair of work boots a size and a half up from his that would change the way he moved, and three sets of plain, dark coveralls, the sort you might see on anyone doing a dirty job in deep space. Layers, he needed layers – it wouldn’t do anything for the look of his face, but it’d bulk out the rest of him enough to be confusing. They were looking for a skinny twentysomething. A man who looked a bit older, a bit heavier than they were after might slip by. He shoved the leftover clothes wholesale into the bag, not caring about order so long as they fit.

Looking back in the mirror, the day’s stubble did almost nothing to disguise his face, and there was enough product still in his hair that it was still trying to maintain its shape. He had to stick his head under water in the sink through in the ‘fresher to get the last of it out, which wasted yet more time, before withdrawing the follicle regenerator from his pocket and running it cautiously over his face – you could never be sure, with these cosmetic models, how well they’d work. This one, taken from a low-power replicator on a tiny shuttle not meant for more than day-trips, gave out after hardly more than a few minutes, and Julian was quite sure his face was still too much his own, that someone would surely notice the resemblance the moment the world went out. It would be nearly nine in the morning back in San Francisco – the morning news holos would already be going out. Starfleet medical valedictorian revealed as an augment…that would at least make a headline, wouldn’t it? It was evening, on Saturn One – fourteen hours behind. Technically, here, yesterday still wasn’t over yet. This time back on Earth, he’d been at a party, drinking and laughing and trading stories with the rest of the racquetball team and never suspecting-

No. There was no time for that right now. He recycled the useless follicle regenerator, erased the replicator queue, and erased the erasure. By the time he was done, there was no sign Julian had ever been in the room at all except for a dent in the bed where the bag had lain.

 The clerk didn’t look twice as Julian walked past him on the way out of the habitat area. He kept his head down, his pace hardly more than a trudge, trying to remember the way janitors moved. He’d never noticed them, on Earth, and that would’ve been infuriating if it weren’t just the impression he wanted to convey. _Pay no attention to me, I’m just one more tired person trying to get through the day._ Down by the docking bay, people paid even less attention. Half the crowd in this neck of the woods was wearing similar coveralls in muted greys and browns and blacks and blues. Spacers, Julian guessed, trying to take in the details of how they walked, how they held themselves. Half of concealment was showing what people expected to be there – he’d used that rule to guide himself by since he was fifteen years old. What did people expect of whoever it was he was posing as now?

The less he spoke, Julian decided, the less risk there was of the accent slipping, or him saying something to give himself away. He’d made a mistake, there, with the clerk at accommodations, but since he never intended to see the man again it was too late to worry about that now. Whoever it was he was playing wouldn’t talk much about himself, he’d answer questions if they were asked, as fully as they required and no further. But he wouldn’t use the same sorts of glib, amusing deflections Julian had at the academy. He needed something as far from that as could be managed – whoever this person was, they were serious, perhaps a trifle slow. Low-level worker aboard a spaceship of some kind, maybe. Slow, even, slightly plodding movements, not hunched over, not in a hurry. Head down, idling along, making the most of his leave while it lasted. Julian recalled a memory of a man two ahead of him in the line to get off the shuttle, and tried to catch that same note, that same heaviness of the walk, as if every step rooted him in the ground and took a little more effort to pick up his feet.

‘Yaigg’s’ was predictably close to the docks, the touristy part Julian had already seen. Yaigg himself was a Bolian, and as cheerful as the stereotypes of his species would suggest, which was something of a problem when trying to be taciturn.

“Latinum, is it?” he asked, blinking at Julian over the counter, “Ok, ok – ID?”

Julian reached a hand into his pocket, blinked, and then made a show of patting himself down, as if looking for a lost ID card. “Could’ve sworn-” he started, very nearly wincing as his affected accent slipped, just a hair, on the last world.

Yaigg tutted. “Pickpockets,” he said dolefully, leaning his chin on his hand. “We’re infested with them – tell you what, we can do it by security question, if you’d rather, until you can get a new card – security should be able to help you there.”

“Thanks,” Julian muttered, and wanted to kick himself a moment later – a grunt might’ve been more in-character.

“No problem,” Yaigg said brightly, “Say, haven’t I seen you before somewhere?”

Julian shrugged. “Might’ve. Been anywhere near Io lately.”

“That frozen wasteland? No, wouldn’t catch me there in a lifetime – give me a bit of sun and sea when I’m planet-side. Ok, name?”

That was the sticking point. It would have to be a real name, or the system wouldn’t work. Worse, it would have to be the real name of someone he knew personally, well enough to guess at their security question – or well enough to know it already. Julian could name perhaps three people who’d let him that close, and he’d never wanted to hurt any of them. He had a split second to decide.

“Erskine,” he said, picking the only other human male on the racquetball team, the same one who had laughingly said over drinks one night that the only way to make these things certain was to choose a question – his was his mother’s maiden name – and then put something that made no sense in as the answer. After a few more drinks, he’d said ‘cauliflower’, and they’d all been so drunk after that that Erskine had claimed for weeks he couldn’t remember anything after about the second glass. “Sam Erskine.”

It was amazing, how many more options opened up in front of you if you were only willing to betray a trust.

Date of birth, place of birth, occupation, parents’ names. Question, answer, no irregularities. Sam had said he hadn’t had to change his question in years with this policy. It looked like Julian had just broken that streak for him. He walked away with as much latinum as he could carry, and a crawling, twisting feeling beneath his skin. The Federation would replace the credits automatically as soon as the fraud was discovered – it would cost them nothing, and latinum wasn’t common currency within the Federation anyway. Probably someone would take a hit, but Sam Erskine would be reimbursed soon enough when his monthly expenditure report came in, or when he found he no longer had the credits to buy luxuries. He wouldn’t starve because of what Julian had done – no-one starved on Earth anymore, no-one went without a home, and the loss of the credits could be only an inconvenience to him where the lack of latinum could mean life or death for Julian. All the same, it left a certain sick feeling in the back of Julian’s throat, to know that he'd done it, and done it without a moment’s hesitation to save his own skin.

Past the tourist part of the docks, the station looked grimier, the shopfronts bright and tawdry, and people didn’t seem to look each other in the eye. This was fine with Julian, for whom every pair of eyes on his back was starting to feel like a spy, every sound of running feet the sounds of pursuit. Up ahead, a sign flashed – a bar, by the look of it, even shabbier and more disreputable-looking than the rest of the station, and Julian seized on it gladly. Where there were bars, you’d find spacers, and Julian needed to find a ship as soon as possible. Preferably one that already had good reasons for avoiding the law. Where he’d go from there, he wasn’t sure – where _was_ there that didn’t have extradition treaties? It had never been something he had to think about, before.

He’d been expecting something seedier when he stepped inside, but aside from the clientele the place looked almost the same as the dive sports bar Felix and he had frequented back in the early days at the Academy, back when they’d still needed the fake ID to go bar-hopping together, with the absurd regional laws on alcohol consumption on that part of earth. Julian would’ve been legal to drink three years earlier at home than he had been in California, but there was no arguing with the Americans about that. The clientele here was widely varied – people and species from every corner of the quadrant seemed to be represented here – and the place was so packed it was a struggle to find a place at the bar without jostling anyone. He leant against the bar and pretended to watch the holo-projector over the bar, which was showing some sort of alien sport Julian didn’t know. Whatever it was, it seemed to involve quite a lot of physical violence and shoulder pads so wide he wondered idly if players had to leave the changing rooms sideways just to fit through the door. He ordered a glass of whatever rotgut was cheapest, and was just trying to get settled and look as if he did this every day when the screens flickered again, and the familiar face of a Federation newscaster filled the room, to a general tumult of boos and jeers.

“Attention, all citizens,” the newscaster said, their face pale and drawn, the way it always was when the news came of some fresh disaster on the fringes of the Federation, the way it had looked in his childhood, when fresh news came in from the Cardassian Wars. “Breaking news – reports that an undocumented augment managed to go undiscovered in Starfleet for years have now been confirmed with the arrests of Richard and Amsha Bashir of London, England, for having illegally paid for their son Julian to be genetically modified almost twenty years ago. Having concealed his augment status in order to join Starfleet, Doctor Julian Bashir-”

More hooting and jeering from the bar as a picture of Julian’s own face, in his brand-new uniform with his arm around someone who had been cut out of the picture, beaming into the holo-recorder, flashed up onscreen. It felt almost obscene to see it there, and Julian might’ve looked away if that hadn’t been just the thing to arouse suspicion.

“-escaped custody and is believed to have gone into hiding off-planet. Starfleet security is combing outgoing vessels, most particularly on the Pluto shuttle route. A full Federation manhunt has been declared, and citizens are advised that the augment should be considered armed and highly dangerous. An insider within Starfleet has confirmed that the Admiralty are already treating this as part of a greater terrorist plot against the Federation. Rumours are already on the rise that this could mark the beginning of another augment crisis, similar to the disaster on Regula I eighty years ago. There have been calls for the genetic screening of aspirant Starfleet officers, and harsher laws to control the illegal trade in genetic modifications. A reward of-”

Julian didn’t hear the rest of it. With shaking hands, he signalled the barman over.

“Same again?” the man said neutrally. “That’s strong stuff, you know. Seen men twice your size felled by a few glasses of that – that’s Romulan ale, that is. The cheap stuff, but hell if it ain’t strong.”

Julian gave the barman the faintly puzzled, desperate look of someone whose drink order was the least of their problems right now. “That’s the idea,” he managed, grateful that he’d at least managed to keep the accent up even under this much stress.

The barman grunted. “Terrifying, ain’t it?” he agreed, “Thought we were done with all this Khan crap by now.”

Julian forced himself to nod, and to look relieved. “Yeah,” he said dully. “Me too.”

He glanced back up at the screen, and his heart gave an awful little lurch as he recognised Palis’ face, tearstained and crumpled and marked with pain – had it only been yesterday she’d been trying to coax him into waltzing with her in the quiet of his flat? He wished, ridiculously, that it would be acceptable to reach down into his bag and touch Kukalaka right then. Not even hug him, just touch him, feel the rough false-fur and the stitches he’d put in with his own hands. His first patient. Probably his only patient, now. Just one brush of fingers against fur and he’d be able to deal with this…

“-never would have dreamed he was a…that he was like _that_ ,” she was saying now, “He seemed so…human. Always. I- I never even suspected until Starfleet Security broke down the door and woke me up.”

“Here you go,” the barman said, pushing the glass of blue liquid at him, “Careful, that’s potent st-”

Julian downed it in one, and pushed the cup back for a refill.

“…huh. Hope you know we charge by the glass for that, mate,”

Julian shrugged. Money, too, was pretty low on his list of concerns right now. A Federation-wide manhunt. Accusations of terrorism. A plot against the Federation. _This is wrong,_ he wanted to scream. _All I wanted was to be in Starfleet. All I wanted was to be a doctor. All I wanted to be was one of you – was that so much to ask?_ He didn’t realise how tightly clenched his jaw had been until he took his next sip of ale, feeling the rage bubbling up beneath his skin and forcing it back, trying not to think of- of any of it, little indignities he hadn’t thought of in years, the interview that should have been happening right at this moment while Julian was drinking cheap Romulan ale on a space station seven hundred million miles away from where he ought to be, Palis saying he had seemed ‘so human’ and meaning, of course, that he was not.

“-how thick do you have to _be_ ,” someone was saying nearby, laughing. “’s a fucking _augment_. All…weird shit. How fucking hard is it to spot the thing you’re screwing is a genetic freak?”

Julian’s hand tightened on the glass, and he pushed it back towards the bartender quickly, before he broke it. “Is there anything stronger?”

He was weeping by the sixth shot of Klingon bloodwine, and about a dozen shots in when he decided that there was no particular reason why he should not lift the wallet of the six-foot-tall, burly-looking man who had made that comment about Palis. This proved to be a mistake, as said six-foot-tall, burly-looking man had friends about the same size as he was, who were quick enough on the uptake to work out that the clumsy young man who’d bumped into their friend on the way from the freshers was probably the one to blame. By that point, Julian had been on shot number eighteen, and even with his metabolism the world was starting to spin around him.

What happened next was extremely painful, and more than a little humiliating, but also probably saved Julian’s life, as he came to hours later with his head on the bar, feeling like one massive bruise, one eye swollen shut and the rest of him aching from more than just the liquor. There are ways to describe a hangover, but all of them rely on metaphor, and all have a certain laddish, ‘oh, let’s have another dozen beers and never mind the consequences’ sort of forced jollity to them. None of this would be accurate. Julian Bashir woke up with his head aching and his mouth dry, and his world no less utterly desolate than it had been the night before.

Nearby, he could hear shouts, and the sound of footsteps, the protests of shopkeepers. He cracked the one eye he could still open, and saw the flash of familiar red uniforms nearby through the dazzle in his eyes. Starfleet had arrived at last. It took everything he had not to bolt for it then and there, took all the effort of years of concealment to keep his breathing slow and deep and even, his head lolling on the bar.

“There’s someone in here, sir!”

“We’re not going to find the augment passed out in some dive, M’Nol.”

 _Yes,_ Julian thought. _Yes, that’s right. Because what you’re looking for is the next Khan Noonien Singh, and that man doesn’t exist, never existed except in the paranoid fantasy of some Starfleet admiral. Clearly, the bruised-up drunk at the bar doesn’t rate a single second more of your time, you can move along now…_

“No, sir. Sorry.”

Julian let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. Starfleet. They were already here. They were already looking for him. He’d expected them to start their search at Pluto, his nominal destination. Maybe he should’ve thought better of them. If he, with his absolutely no experience of espionage beyond holos, could think of getting off early, it followed so could Starfleet Security. He waited until the sounds of feet and of shouting had retreated a little, then let out a low, only-partly-feigned groan, and let his body stir sleepily.

“’bout time,” said the barman. “I saved your bag for you, and that’s twenty-five credits or five strips of latinum for the drinks last night.”

Julian nodded, and fished out the required latinum from the inside pocket of the bag. He’d taken care to spread the load out – some in the pockets of the clothes he was wearing beneath his coveralls, some in the bag. He was glad now of what he had taken as paranoia when he first thought of it – certainly all the latinum there had been in the pockets of the coveralls themselves was gone.

“What time is it?”

“Nineteen-thirty hours.”

Julian swore, using some of Felix’s more colourful vocabulary, as he wasn’t in the habit himself – more distance, he needed more distance. “My ship was meant to leave eighteen hundred – you don’t know anyone that could use a mechanic, do you? I’m trying to work my way back to-” he scrambled for an appropriately distant planet. “Tarsus IV.”

A couple of extension courses on engineering weren’t going to fit Julian to get a starship running, but he could fix an engine and repair a drive plate at need, and people would be looking for a doctor, not an anonymous tech.

“Nothing going that way,” the barman said neutrally.

Julian considered pressing the matter – would it make him too memorable? Being too keen to get off-station was a bad idea right now. “Starfleet closed everything down?”

“Everything but their own ships,” the barman said sourly. “Nothing coming in, either, once word gets around.”

Julian nodded, mind already whirring. If he tried to stow away on a Starfleet ship, he’d get nowhere except back to- to whatever awaited him on Earth. A trial in which no-one would believe a word he had to say, a sentence that could be _anything_ , but which would be so much worse now he’d tried to run. If he tried to lie low here…he’d be caught within days.

“You should go to sickbay, get that mess looked at,” the barman went on, gesturing at Julian’s face. “You hardly look human at all right now.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” Julian said moodily, and picked up his bag. There was a particularly filthy public ‘fresher a few rows along, some things apparently being universal, and while the mirror there was cracked and grimy, it was sufficient for the job. If Julian had known earlier such a complete disguise could be effected by a beating that did not seem to have caused much permanent damage, he might’ve paid someone to do it for him.

What he needed, right now, was the sort of ship that wouldn’t want the Federation poking around. He thought again, wistfully, of his spy holos. In those, the dashing hero always knew someone who knew someone, or could at least find disreputable areas of the docks without getting beaten to a pulp first. Julian knew no-one. He was amazed he had managed to stay free this long and, through the pounding in his head, the dryness in his throat, wondered idly if this was how all those sorts of things looked when you were actually doing them, not playing them out in a game, and almost doubled over with stifled laughter, except that the pain brought him back to himself.

So, he couldn’t lie low, he couldn’t stay here, he couldn’t move on, and he didn’t know where to start to look for- he didn’t know what. Smugglers, would be his first bet – they, at least, would probably have somewhere he could hide, if only he could pony up the latinum for it. Now, all that remained was to find somewhere, and hope he really was unrecognisable enough that no-one would figure out who he was and hand him in for the reward. He considered, briefly, finding another, sleazier bar to lie low in, but rejected the idea. The thought of drinking until all of this went away appealed to him far too much right now, and on the list of potential futures, ‘spaceport drunk’ ranked only barely above ‘prisoner’. It would have to be the docks.

He had passed the civilian docks on his way to the bar. Starfleet had its own bays on a station this size, and the tourist shuttles came so often they almost had their own dedicated bays. Those, from what he had seen, were sleek and shiny, the picture of the Federation he had grown up in, the place of promise and wonder and acceptance for all. It was difficult not to draw comparisons, seeing the _other_ set of docks, kept tucked out of sight lest they spoil the view for the tourists. Here, his bruises and bleary eyes and already-quite-grimy coveralls hardly attracted a second glance, even as every flare of light, every shift in facial expression, brought a fresh burst of white-hot pain behind the eyeballs. Every flash of red out of the corner of his eye was a Starfleet security uniform, every loud noise a shout – _it’s him, it’s the augment!_ – and the press on the crowd on every side was almost claustrophobic – he couldn’t run, if he was spotted it would all be over-

Breathe in. Breathe out. _You’re a surgeon, Julian,_ he reminded himself sharply. _If you can’t handle this, you have no business practicing medicine at all._ He tried not to think that, even if he did get away, the odds were good he would never practice again anyway. His eyes flicked over the crowd, trying to find something – anything –  that would give him a way out.

It was chance, more than anything, that he spotted the Ferengi. Either that or fellow-feeling, for someone else who seemed every bit as uncomfortable as Julian felt amidst the grime and the bustle and the noise of the docks. She looked quite young, and kept glancing back over her shoulder, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. Squirrelly, Julian thought. That might not be as good a sign as he’d first thought – it meant she was uncomfortable, possibly new at whatever it was she was doing, and just because this was a shady part of the station didn’t mean she was automatically up to anything shady any more than her being a Ferengi did. All the same, he kept her in his field of vision – she was looking behind her too often, moved too quickly – she didn’t seem to want to be seen, and she hadn’t been doing it long enough to know that the best way not to be seen was to act as if you belonged. She didn’t want to be seen – there had to be a reason for that, and even if she herself had nothing to do with what Julian wanted, it might help him find people who did. She rounded a corner soon enough, and slipped down a narrow side-passage, dark enough that Julian could feel no particular shame in following. By the time he was within hearing range, there was already a deal going on.

“-told you, I can’t do it. I’ve done too much as it is – you know what he’ll do to me if he catches me making profit.”

“And here I thought you wanted to be treated like a lady.”

“Not the way my people treat ladies. ‘Sides, if I’m a woman, I’m no threat to his owning the shop, but not if I’m acting like I’m still-”

“Oh, to hell with your brother and his shop. We both know he hasn’t a tenth of your head for business.”

“Don’t talk so loud, Thelin, _please_ – I’ll find something, I promise.”

“Well, hurry up! I’ve got three men down with some sort of Klingon hell-disease, and fucking _Starfleet_ breathing down my neck on top of it all. They’ve been all over the ship already – didn’t find the secret compartments, but if they come back-”

“I _know_! Just…hold out as long as you can, I’ll try and find what you need, just- Just don’t do anything stupid, all right? I’m still your woman for this. Farr won’t even know I’ve taken ‘em.”

“Well, hurry up, then. We need to be out of here as soon as the blockade lifts – this shipment won’t last forever.”

“I’m working on it, I swear. I just need a bit more time…”

“We don’t _have_ time!” A low huff of breath, and then, “Go on, before your brother notices you’re missing. And clothed. Bit creepy, isn’t it? Like he’s looking for an excuse to check out how good a job that Vulcan surgeon of yours did.”

“Yes, well…Farr was always a traditionalist.” A low laugh. “Stay safe, Thelin. You and that pack of madmen you call a crew.”

“You too, little sister.”

Footsteps, and Julian could barely make out much more than two silhouettes, one hurrying towards him, the other hurrying away. He followed the second, taller figure, only barely avoiding the shadow of the Ferengi woman in the dark. He was feeling pretty pleased with himself as he rounded the next corner, right up until a large hand caught him by the shoulder and slammed him up against the bulkhead, the other hand tight around his throat.

“You know,” the big Andorian who had cornered him said in a deceptively light, friendly voice. “The thing about tailing someone – you don’t want to get caught.

“Mr Thelin, I presume?” Julian choked out, trying to force a grin. “I think we might be able to help each other.”

Thelin’s grip tightened. “If Kirta’s scumbag brother hired you-”

“He didn’t!” Julian interrupted, “Honestly, I- I-”

“Then why were you tailing her?”

Julian tried to shrug, “She looked worried, it stood out. I was hoping she’d help me find someone like you.”

“Like me?” Thelin sneered.

“Someone,” Julian said, very precisely, “Who doesn’t want Federation attention and won’t ask too many questions if I say that I’m not that keen on the idea either, so long as I can provide what you need.”

“Can you?”

“Three crewmen suffering from an unknown Klingon ailment, and one recent Starfleet doctor in the mood to desert,” Julian lied. “Even if you get medicine for them, you won’t know what to do for them. And all I’m asking in exchange is a mattress in one of your hiding-places and passage to wherever’s furthest from Earth. Does that sound fair, Captain?”

The man gave him a considering look, “First mate,” he corrected, “Defector, huh?”

“Look,” Julian did his best to snap, “No-one said anything about augments. Klingons, Cardassians, Romulans, fine, but _augments_ …” he didn’t need to feign his shudder. It held together, he thought, as a story. Besides, it wasn’t that far off the truth. If he’d been any one of the things he’d listed, he’d have been _fine_ , if he’d managed to get this far.

“So you’re cutting your losses,” the Andorian said, his antennae twitching with distaste as he looked Julian over. “Typical human weakness. No disciplined Andorian would ever do such a-”

“Yes, yes, we can posture about species later, but now you have crew who need treated, and treated discreetly. I’m guessing you can’t go to the station doctor for whatever it is they’ve got, because wherever they caught it, they shouldn’t have been. Am I right?”

“Not nearly,” Thelin growled, then seemed to relent. “But we can’t go to station authorities, right enough. All right. You fix them up, you’ve got a deal, so far as it goes. But I’m watching you, human.”

“I wasn’t expecting anything less.”

The illness itself was actually a comparatively simple one – gruesome, yes, but not life-threatening, and even easily treatable, provided access to basic equipment. Julian just hadn’t expected it to be quite _so_ basic. Not even a tricorder, just medical knowledge and making the best of what you had to do what you had to do, all of which had sounded a lot more glamorous when he was sitting in a nice warm lecture theatre listening to how to do all of this, or practicing his skills in a lab where there weren’t three very tetchy people and his own life depending on him getting this right. When he finally finished, though, Thelin gave a gruff nod.

“Not bad work,” he said grudgingly.

Julian smiled distractedly, “It was, rather, wasn’t it? Fluids are going to be the primary problem – they won’t be able to take much for the next few days. I’ll check as regularly as I can, of course, but the bare minimum of water – or anything else – at least until the end of the week.”

“And if they don’t?”

Julian swallowed. “Then they will likely drown in their own fluids. The thirst, will be the worst of it, but keep them away from water and you should be fine.”

Thelin looked him over. “Funny,” he said, “State you’re in, you don’t look like that great a medic. Ok, Starfleet. You get your mattress - food’s nothing special, but if you can keep them alive ‘till we’re out of the system, we’ll take you that far. I’ll clear it with the captain when she comes ‘round.”

He was as good as his word, though no further, Julian had to concede later. It was only his good fortune that he had never suffered from claustrophobia. The secret compartment under the cargo hold was tight, and dark, hardly enough room for his bag and the mattress he had claimed, and it smelled strongly as if generations of some sort of animal had been living and breeding down here. Above him, he could hear footsteps and voices, as the remaining crew went about their business. Down here in the stinking dark, there was nothing to take his mind off the pain in his head, the way that every facial expression brought a fresh wave of other little pains, or the thought of where his parents were right now. They’d never exactly got on, not since…well, not since the enhancements, really, though he hadn’t known why until he was fifteen. Close to twenty years of disappointment with one another, and now he’d never see them again. And, still, it felt like a wound. They would face trial, criminal charges, anything from ten to twenty years was probable. It might have been only a handful, if they hadn’t gone so far, hadn’t altered as much, or if he’d stayed and come quietly like a good boy back on Earth. He…he had no idea what would happen to him, except that it was too late now for retreat. Whatever happened now, he could not go back.

It was three days later, in the end, before Starfleet conceded that, wherever the augment was, it wasn’t Saturn One. Another fortnight, after that, before a young man in battered coveralls stepped off a freighter on Lyssaria with latinum in his pocket and fading-green bruises on his face. The name on his ident card was ‘Amin Dufresne’, and his documentation was better than most that passed that way, paid for in latinum and worth every slip.


End file.
